The present invention relates to fabricating machinery for manufacturing high-intensity-discharge devices and, in particular, to a machine for fabricating a high-intensity-discharge arc tube such as a mercury vapor arc tube.
One such machine is disclosed in an Article entitled "High-Pressure Mercury Vapor Lamp Machinery" in an advertising brochure of the Betamax Company on page 7 thereof. The Article describes fabricating machinery for making high-intensity-discharge (HID) arc tubes consisting of one 20-head pinch sealing machine that seals the electrodes into the arc tube prior to exhausting and a 48/24-head two-stage high-pressure mercury-vapor arc tube exhaust machine consisting of a 48-head turret where the quartz arc tubes are initially evacuated during a recycle of the 48-head turret and are filled above atmospheric pressure with argon gas an dosed with mercury. The arc tubes are then transferred automatically to a 24-head turret during a cycle of which the final evacuation and sealing operations are carried out.
Such apparatus including rotatable turrets is common in the lamp-making industry. Another example of a lamp-making machine utilizing a rotatable turret is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,210,822, dated Oct. 12, 1965, issued to C. Lenz et al. The Lenz patent discloses a machine for fabricating the stems for electric lamps or other electronic devices utilizing flares, tubulations and lead-in wires to be assembled as a complete stem. The machine includes a turret which is driven to index in a step-by-step rotation and carries a plurality of heads next to its periphery. The heads are arranged in a circular series with minimum spacing between one another such that with each indexing motion of the turret a next succeeding head is moved into the position vacated by the preceding head. At each position there is an operating station where work is performed on the stems. Another such lamp-making apparatus utilizing a rotatable turret is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,550,227, dated Dec. 29, 1970, issued to R. V. Weigel et al. The Weigel patent discloses a machine for forming a filament and mount structure on the glass reflector sections of projector-type electric incandescent lamps comprising an indexing carried (turret) having a series of heads thereon each comprising a holder for supporting a reflector section and a movable carriage for holding a plurality of lead-in conductors. This machine provides an improved and fully automatic apparatus for forming the mount structures on the reflector sections of projector-type electric incandescent lamps at a high-production rate.